A year or more ago I was trying to diagnose problems with a Dell XPS 13<snip>
1943.
As far as I can recall it wasn't charging the battery and the light on
the front was blinking between white and orange to indicate that it
didn't have enough power to charge the battery/run.
I finally got round to looking at it again and I first checked the
eternal power supply with a multi-meter and saw that it was working and outputting somewhere over 19V.
I then plugged it in, powered up, and pressed F5 to run diagnostics.
This said that the battery was on its last legs, but showed the 45W PSU
was working, and at the moment the battery seems to be charging.
At the moment the battery is up to 20% and still charging.
A year or more ago I was trying to diagnose problems with a Dell XPS 13
1943.
As far as I can recall it wasn't charging the battery and the light on the front was blinking between white and orange to indicate that it didn't
have enough power to charge the battery/run.
I finally got round to looking at it again and I first checked the eternal power supply with a multi-meter and saw that it was working and outputting somewhere over 19V.
I then plugged it in, powered up, and pressed F5 to run diagnostics.
This said that the battery was on its last legs, but showed the 45W PSU
was working, and at the moment the battery seems to be charging.
At the moment the battery is up to 20% and still charging.
I am therefore somewhat bemused (as usual).
I assume that it should boot off an external drive, at a minimum a Linux distribution on a memory stick.
I have a W10 install USB memory stick so probably I could install from
that onto another external USB memory stick?
Or would that be a step too far?
Battery is now up to 50% but the charge rate has dropped right off.
I don't know if this is a battery maintenance strategy - fast initial
charge then slow charge once past 50% - or something else.
Now charging at 260 mA and peak (flat battery) was 3553 mA.
The diagnostic screen from F5 is being very helpful at the moment.
Still showing the white power light.
Back when the problem started it would run off battery but would not run
off the power supply and the battery kept on discharging.
If it manages to keep charging then replacement battery will be ordered.
I just need to make sure that basic functionality is working again before spending money on new stuff which is specific to this laptop.
David <wibble@btinternet.com> wrote:
A year or more ago I was trying to diagnose problems with a Dell XPS 13
1943.
As far as I can recall it wasn't charging the battery and the light on
the front was blinking between white and orange to indicate that it
didn't have enough power to charge the battery/run.
I finally got round to looking at it again and I first checked the
eternal power supply with a multi-meter and saw that it was working and
outputting somewhere over 19V.
I then plugged it in, powered up, and pressed F5 to run diagnostics.
This said that the battery was on its last legs, but showed the 45W PSU
was working, and at the moment the battery seems to be charging.
At the moment the battery is up to 20% and still charging.
I am therefore somewhat bemused (as usual).
I had the non-charging problem (XPS 15 9560) - laptop was completely
dead, wouldn't charge, nada. I took it apart and poked it with a
multimeter, it suggested power wasn't getting very far in, supposedly
the main MOSFETs were turned off by the power management chip.
After some Googling around I found a tip to replace the CMOS battery,
and that brought it back to life. It started charging and working just
like normal.
If yours is back, you might check the CMOS battery in case it's low. Sometimes it's a rechargeable, sometimes it's a coin cell. Would be
worth replacing if the latter. If rechargeable, removing and trickle charging it for a while to bring it back from dead flat might help.
I assume that it should boot off an external drive, at a minimum a
Linux distribution on a memory stick.
I have a W10 install USB memory stick so probably I could install from
that onto another external USB memory stick?
Or would that be a step too far?
Don't see why you couldn't do that.
Theo
IIRC the laptop wasn't recognising the charger so wouldn't fire up
because it wasn't confident there was enough power to run it. All I did different this time was to check the output of the charger using a multi-meter by poking a probe up the inside of the connector and
touching the other probe to the outside. Which showed that it was
working. I am now wondering if there is a Dell pin inside the power
supply connector which is used to identify the power supply, and I moved
that slightly which in turn made contact inside the PC power connector.
David wrote:
IIRC the laptop wasn't recognising the charger so wouldn't fire up
because it wasn't confident there was enough power to run it. All I
did different this time was to check the output of the charger using a
multi-meter by poking a probe up the inside of the connector and
touching the other probe to the outside. Which showed that it was
working. I am now wondering if there is a Dell pin inside the power
supply connector which is used to identify the power supply, and I
moved that slightly which in turn made contact inside the PC power
connector.
Dell laptop power bricks for many years have had a 3rd "communication"
pin inside the barrel plug, this does indeed let the laptop know the available power rating; without this the laptop assumes the worst and
will probably run the CPU at minimum speed and refuse to charge at the
same time it is powered on ...
On 05/08/2023 13:35, Andy Burns wrote:
David wrote:
IIRC the laptop wasn't recognising the charger so wouldn't fire up
because it wasn't confident there was enough power to run it. All I
did different this time was to check the output of the charger using a
multi-meter by poking a probe up the inside of the connector and
touching the other probe to the outside. Which showed that it was
working. I am now wondering if there is a Dell pin inside the power
supply connector which is used to identify the power supply, and I
moved that slightly which in turn made contact inside the PC power
connector.
Dell laptop power bricks for many years have had a 3rd "communication"
pin inside the barrel plug, this does indeed let the laptop know the
available power rating; without this the laptop assumes the worst and
will probably run the CPU at minimum speed and refuse to charge at the
same time it is powered on ...
This is also often a case of intentional design so that if you buy a
non-dell charger, that will not work even if you have matched the
voltage, plug type, PSU wattage etc....
that extra "comms" pin ties you to using Dell only parts.....
This is also often a case of intentional design so that if you buy a
non-dell charger, that will not work even if you have matched the
voltage, plug type, PSU wattage etc....
that extra "comms" pin ties you to using Dell only parts.....
On Sat, 05 Aug 2023 14:32:55 +0100, SH wrote:
On 05/08/2023 13:35, Andy Burns wrote:
David wrote:This is also often a case of intentional design so that if you buy a
IIRC the laptop wasn't recognising the charger so wouldn't fire up
because it wasn't confident there was enough power to run it. All I
did different this time was to check the output of the charger using
a multi-meter by poking a probe up the inside of the connector and
touching the other probe to the outside. Which showed that it was
working. I am now wondering if there is a Dell pin inside the power
supply connector which is used to identify the power supply, and I
moved that slightly which in turn made contact inside the PC power
connector.
Dell laptop power bricks for many years have had a 3rd "communication"
pin inside the barrel plug, this does indeed let the laptop know the
available power rating; without this the laptop assumes the worst and
will probably run the CPU at minimum speed and refuse to charge at the
same time it is powered on ...
non-dell charger, that will not work even if you have matched the
voltage, plug type, PSU wattage etc....
that extra "comms" pin ties you to using Dell only parts.....
Yes.
The unexplained bit is why the laptop is now recognising the Dell
branded power supply when it wasn't previously!
I've just installed the Dell Support Assistant and downloaded and
installed a load of driver updates and the laptop is now refusing to recognise the power supply.
Sysop: | Keyop |
---|---|
Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
Users: | 415 |
Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
Uptime: | 35:02:20 |
Calls: | 8,720 |
Calls today: | 3 |
Files: | 13,276 |
Messages: | 5,956,170 |